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One alias to view or create a GitHub PR

A simple shell alias that saves a surprising amount of context switching.

cli github productivity

A simple shell alias that saves a surprising amount of context switching:

alias ghpr="gh pr view --web 2>/dev/null || gh pr create --web"

How it works

  1. gh pr view --web tries to open the PR for the current branch in your browser
  2. If no PR exists, it exits non-zero (stderr suppressed with 2>/dev/null)
  3. The || fallback then runs gh pr create --web to open the create PR page instead

Why it’s useful

Without this, the workflow is:

  • Run gh pr view --web
  • See the error “no pull requests found”
  • Run gh pr create --web

With this alias, you just type ghpr and you’ll end up in the right place regardless of whether a PR already exists or not.